David Capes
Let’s talk about some of the movies you talk about in the book. We mentioned “Alien” earlier. What other movies?
Phil Tallon
I think one of the greatest horror movies, critically, in terms of box office, but then also in theological richness, is a movie like “The Exorcist.” That comes from a book written by a Christian writer who had a very intentional purpose in writing, which is that he wanted to scare people back into believing in the supernatural. And he’s been on the record about this. He wrote a book called “The Exorcist.” It was adapted by William Friedkin for the film. It’s a movie that presents us with the possibility, which Christians, every Bible reader, would recognize as being a real possibility of demonic possession. And the necessity of exorcism, but it presents it in an entirely modern context.
It pitches it to modern people who have forgotten about this possibility or been numbed themselves to this possible reality of possession. The mother, the main character in the story, goes through all these steps, goes to all these doctors, trying to figure out what’s wrong with her daughter. In the end, she realizes that modernity cannot explain her plight, and so she finally has to go seek out an exorcist.
She speaks to a priest, and even the priest says, “If you want an exorcist, you need a time machine. We don’t do that anymore.” But they find somebody who can help with the situation. And so it’s this wonderful climactic battle between the forces of God and the forces of evil. I think, though it’s terrifying, it’s repulsive, the events in the film are too scary for a lot of people to enjoy watching and actually, we shouldn’t really enjoy watching them. But it nonetheless brings us back to a reality that I think we need to take more seriously. So it can be, I think, a helpful cultural text to shock us back into seeing something.
David Capes
We recently passed Halloween. I remember hearing on the radio the top 20 greatest horror films, and “The Exorcist” was among those. Alien was among those as well as some of the older ones. Those with Boris Karloff and some of the great actors of the 40s and 50s. Some people just hate these movies and will avoid them at all cost. Other people just seem to love them. What’s going on in that?
Phil Tallon
Yes, you’re exactly right. There are some studies on people’s reactions to different genres. There was a big thousand-person poll not too long ago on different genres. Horror is the most divisive genre, which is to say that it’s hated by the most people relative to other genres.
David Capes
Some are box office successes, too.
Phil Tallon
Yes, some people really love it, especially if you have a kind lower budget. Then you can consistently make money. Horror movies are probably not going to make a billion dollars, but it could make one hundred million on a ten-million-dollar budget. And so it’s a divisive genre. Some people hate it. Some people like it.
An important philosophical question is, why do people like horror? Because, as I described it, fear and revulsion are negative emotions. Normally, you don’t want to make yourself feel that. You want to get away from that. St. Augustine asked this question in his confessions. He says, “Why would people want to look on a corpse that makes you shudder?” He’s wondering about that question. Augustine answers that question by saying that we have this curiosity to see things that are wrong and bad. That could be one of the reasons people want to see something that they don’t normally get to see. And maybe it even comes from a bad reason.
David Capes
Think of the people that slow down on the freeway to look at a wreck.
Phil Tallon
Yes, a morbid curiosity. There have been some studies about horror watchers, and they can be sorted roughly into three different types. There’s what you might call the classic thrill seeker. That’s a person who enjoys experiencing fear. These are folks who like roller coasters or haunted houses.
David Capes
They’re not risk-averse people.
Phil Tallon
No, they enjoy that experience. Horror then provides an opportunity for experiencing this roller coaster of emotions, even if they’re scared. Then there are the white knucklers. Those are the people who don’t like horror. They just suffer through it. Maybe they’re pressured by their friends to watch a movie, or maybe they want to show everybody they can handle this. That would be like the person who goes on the roller coaster even though they don’t want to.
And then there’s a third category they found, which are people who are actually interested in horror because they think it might show them something about reality that they wouldn’t normally encounter. We live in a time where our day-to-day physical experience is fairly insulated from great amounts of suffering. It does puncture through in all of our lives at points. But compared with other times and places, it’s very possible now, especially in our context, to go through a long period of time without experiencing tremendous horrors. You might just say, I know these things happen, but I want to know what it actually be like to go through it. And the only way I can do that is, is maybe by putting myself through that experience artistically.
David Capes
And movies do have a way of bringing you into the story. A good film will bring you into it and you connect with the characters in a deep, consistent way through the movie.
Phil Tallon
Yes. That last category seems to me to have the most promise for a good reason, to explore the world through artistic horror. It’s a bit like C.S. Lewis says in Experiment and Criticism. “I can see through stories, I can see the world through a thousand men’s eyes and yet remain myself.”
You can encounter a situation, especially if it’s a good work of art that’s realistically told. The characters behave according to their characters. They go through the process of encountering evil, and you see how it affects them. And you can think about the world through this particular genre. It’s not the way that the entire world is at every moment, but it’s a particular experience that does occur. And so I think that works of art can function a little bit like laboratory experiments. Or like a moment where you enter into thinking about what something would be like through a work, in a much safer way than going out and putting yourself in danger. And really doing it yourself.
David Capes
Yes, going into a war zone and encountering things like that. Let’s talk about it as a theologian. What can we learn from this genre, about evil, about us, about the world, about how it can save our souls?
Phil Tallon
I think going back to the idea that good horror helps us take evil seriously. I think in many ways, what St. Augustine and others have said about the nature of evil is borne out very much by thinking about the horror and the evil that we see through it. Augustine’s view is that horror is privation. It’s a disorder in the way that the world should be, and so we’re missing something that should be there in God’s good creation. I think you can very clearly see that through a monster. A monster has some kind of disorder, maybe actually like an ontological disorder. This creature that shouldn’t exist at all, given what we know about the world, or more likely that there’s a deep moral disorder. The monstrous villain values something far differently than he or she should. There’s a disorder in their way of thinking and being in the world. They’re driven by desires that have grown disproportionate.
David Capes
I think of Gollum when you said that. Gollum comes to mind in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
Phil Tallon
Yes, very much so. Gollum is consumed by the evil power of the ring. And he’s a reduced person, right? He’s shrunken down to just this narrow set of desires. Evil is like that. It ultimately makes us less than we should be. I think this is where the theology of evil, evil is privation, still has a lot of explanatory power. When we think about what evil truly is. You can see this in a lot of other ways. The social order is missing and maybe even the supernatural order being out of joint. So at the very least, I’m entering into thinking about evil. One thing I think it showed me is that the Christian tradition, with its understanding that evil isn’t a force, it’s not a substance, is still parasitic on the reality that God has
made.
David Capes
Well, it’s a really interesting idea for a book on theology. It’s at the intersection of culture. What’s in culture and now what faith can help illuminate regarding that culture. I look forward to seeing it when it comes out. It’s the book entitled “Cinema Inferno: How Horror Movies Can Save Your Soul.” Dr. Philip Tallon, thanks for being with us today on “The Stone Chapel Podcast.”
Phil Tallon
Glad to be here.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
